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Self-Help Groups Are Transforming Women's Lives in India
For decades, men ruled the farms in Bihar. Now, it's women who are reshaping the agricultural economy.
Young women who are part of one of Heifer International's Self-Help Groups support and learn from each other.
Gunja Das and a younger assistant whom she is training to become a Community Agricultural Veterinary Entrepreneur.
Gunja Das leaves her home on her scooter to travel to farms around the local area.
Gunja Das, her husband and two children sit outside their home in the Muzaffarpur district of Bihar, India.
Gunja Das stands behind the counter of her pharmacy, serving customers medicines for their farm animals.
One of Heifer International's Self-Help Groups created to improve the literacy and basic mathematics of disadvantaged women in Bihar, India.
'I was always just my husband's wife. My father's daughter. The mother of my son.' Gunja Das cleared her throat. The air is thick and filled with dust in Muzaffarpur, a district in the Indian state of Bihar. It is one of India's most disadvantaged states, where 80 percent of the population work in farming and agriculture.
'I was a traditional housewife here, and I never left my home,' continued Das as her young children listened intently through a crack in her front door. 'My dream was to be able to send those two to a good middle school, where they could learn English.'
Recent financial constraints, worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic, made her dream difficult to imagine. At the same time, extreme heat and unpredictable monsoon seasons were becoming more prevalent year on year, endangering Muzaffarpur's agricultural economy and the fragile livelihoods of millions of India's most vulnerable people.
But Gunja Das received a lifeline.
In 2022, she was invited to join a 'Self-Help Group' for women in her community. She recalled not knowing what it was and was wary of the invitation. Her husband, she said, was the one to encourage her to leave the home and attend the meeting.
The Self-Help Group she was invited to was one of several hundred small, women-only community groups that have been created in Muzaffarpur by Heifer International, a non-profit organization working on the ground in Bihar to support the livelihoods of over 70,000 rural families.
Heifer International had selected a local NGO partner called Pragati Gramin Vikas Samiti to help organize the Self-Help Groups. The aim was to identify specific problems facing rural women in agriculture and provide them with the support to overcome them.
In Muzaffarpur, there was a shortage of qualified veterinary and animal workers, vital to protecting key value chains in the agrarian economy. Heifer International offered to train women to become Community Agricultural Veterinary Entrepreneurs, CAVEs for short.
'It was an exciting process to be a part of, but it had significant challenges,' said Randhir Kumar, a senior project manager at Heifer International in Bihar. 'Many women felt it would be too much responsibility for them, especially without the support of their husbands.'
Other women were forbidden from attending further meetings by their husbands
But for Gunja Das, the first meeting was 'life-changing.' She was selected to attend a seven-day residential training course led by veterinary professionals shortly after. While fearful and anxious about leaving her home and family for the first time in 11 years, she described how much she began to enjoy the 'intensive training in farmstock vaccinations, diagnosis, deworming, and animal care.'
The gender divide in Bihar is stark. While 80 percent of the population work in agriculture, only 13 percent of landowners are women.
The oppressive caste system has been part of Bihar's social fabric for centuries. For women belonging to the low Dalit caste like Gunja Das, there are societal barriers to education, medical care, and even basic employment.
Modernization is needed to support the state's agricultural economy. Sonmani Choudhary, program director at Heifer International, explained that she thinks 'smallholder women should be the backbone of rural transformation in Bihar.'
Centuries of extreme inequality within the state's agrarian economy have left a painful legacy that runs deeply through the roots of Bihar. Feudal governing since medieval times allowed the ruling nobility called Zamindars, to control vast swathes of land in Bihar. Wealthy high-caste landlords effectively owned the workers from the lower rungs of the caste system.
Corruption combined with the deeply entrenched caste discrimination continued through the 20th century, with violent land disputes reaching fever pitch in the 1990s.
Today, landless farming families belonging to a lower caste and often earning no more than enough to feed themselves have little option but to continue to live off the land they do not own.
Pradeep Priyadarshi is the secretary of Pragati Gramin Vikas Samiti. He has advocated for land reform and gender equality for decades in Bihar. He explained: 'Before the Heifer project, nobody in the community knew Gunja Das' name. Few would even speak with her. Now 4,000 people here know who she is!'
After several weeks of training provided by Heifer International, Gunja Das began treating animals in need of vaccination in her first week. 'I was travelling on a scooter, which Heifer organized across Muzaffarpur to treat animals. It made me nervous, but my confidence grew and grew,' she said.
Last year, Gunja Das treated over 18,000 farm animals – from water buffaloes to lambs – across Bihar. Her work is so in-demand that she recently traveled to Jharkhand and Delhi to conduct workshops for animal care in both states.
To date, Heifer International has trained more than 1,300 CAVEs like Gunja across India, Nepal, Cambodia, and Bangladesh.
Opening the front door to her home, Gunja's young children and husband joined her on her porch. 'Now, they call me Gunja's husband,' her husband said, with a broad smile.
'Being able to send my children to a good middle school is still one of my proudest achievements,' said Gunja Das, holding her husband's hand, before adding: 'And training other local young women, some not so much older than my daughter, to become veterinary entrepreneurs like me, is one of the most humbling experiences of my life.'
